Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings Part 20

23.23. The above-named captain sent a great and notorious tryant, who surpa.s.sed many of those who have charge of destroying those countries, with a certain number of Spaniards, to punish those Indians who had fled from such a great pestilence and butchery: and he declared they were in revolt, seeking to make it appear that they had done something wrong, for which the Spaniards must punish them and take vengeance: they themselves, however, merit any most cruel torture whatsoever, without mercy, because they are so deprived of mercy and compa.s.sion towards those innocent creatures.

24.24. The Spaniards went to the rock and forced their way up, the Indians being naked and without arms; then the Spaniards called the Indians with professions of peace, a.s.suring them that no harm should be done them, if they did not fight; the Indians at once ceased, whereupon that most cruel man commanded the Spaniards, to seize all the strong positions of the rock, and when taken, to surround the Indians.

These tigers and lions surrounded the tame lambs, and disembowelled and put to the sword so many, that they stopped to rest, so many had they cut to pieces.

25.25. When they had rested a little, the captain ordered that they should kill and throw down from the rock, which was very high, all the survivors; and so they did. And the witnesses say, that they beheld such a ma.s.s of Indians thrown from the rock, that there might have been seven hundred men together, who were crushed to pieces where they fell.

26.26. To complete their great cruelty, they sought out all the Indians who had hidden in the thicket, and he commanded all to be put to the sword; and thus they killed them, and threw them down from the rock.

27.27. Nor would he rest satisfied with the cruel things that have been related, but wished to distinguish himself still more and increase the horribleness of his sins, by commanding that all the Indians, men and women, save those he kept for his own service, who had been captured alive (because in these ma.s.sacres each usually chooses a few men, women and children for his own use) should be put in a straw house to which he set fire: some forty or fifty were thus burnt alive, while others were thrown to fierce dogs that tore them to pieces and ate them.

28.28. Another time, this same tyrant captured many Indians in a certain town called Cota which he visited; he had fifteen or twenty lords and princ.i.p.al persons torn by dogs; and he cut off the hands of many men and women, tied them to cords and hung about seventy pairs of hands along a beam, so that the other Indians should see what had been done to these people; and he cut off the noses of many women and children.

29.29. n.o.body could explain the actions, and cruelty of this man, G.o.d's enemy, because they are innumerable, nor have such deeds as he did in those countries and in the province of Guatemala, ever been witnessed or heard of since then: during many years he went about those countries doing these deeds, burning and destroying the inhabitants and their property.

30.30. The witnesses in the trial further say, that the cruelties and ma.s.sacres perpetrated in the said new kingdom of Granada by the captain himself and, with his consent, by all those tyrants and destroyers of the human race who were with him, were such that they have wasted and exterminated all the country. And that unless His Majesty arrests the ma.s.sacring done among the Indians to extort gold which, as they had already given all they had, they no longer possess, the destruction will shortly be complete, and no Indians of any sort will be left to sustain the country, which will be left depopulated and desolate.

31.31. It should be considered how great and furious has been the cruelty and pestilential tyranny of unhappy tyrants, in the s.p.a.ce of two or three years, since the discovery of this kingdom which, as all who have been there, and the witnesses at the trial say, was as thickly populated as any in the world; they have desolated it with ma.s.sacres, so devoid of mercy, of the fear of G.o.d and the King, that they say, not a single person will be left alive unless His Majesty shortly prevents these infernal operations. And so I believe it to be, for with my own eyes I have seen many, and large countries in those parts, which they have destroyed and completely depopulated within a brief period.

32.32. There are other large provinces, bordering the said new kingdom of Granada, called Popayan and Cali: also three, or four others that extend for more than five hundred leagues; the Spaniards have rendered them desolate, and destroyed them like the others, unjustly robbing and torturing to death the numberless inhabitants of that most delightful country.

33.33. People coming now from there declare that it excites compa.s.sion to see so many large towns burnt and destroyed; towns where formerly there were a thousand or two thousand families, are reduced to hardly fifty, while others are entirely burned and abandoned.

34.34. In other places, from one to three hundred leagues of country are found completely deserted; large towns having been burnt and destroyed.

35.35. Great and cruel tyrants penetrated into New Granada from the direction of the province of Quito in the kingdom of Peru, and into Popayan and Cali from the direction of Cartagena and Uraba, while from Cartagena, other ill-starred tyrants marched through to Quito; afterwards others, came from the direction of Rio de San Juan, which is on the South coast. All of these men united together and they have devastated and depopulated more than six hundred leagues of country, sending innumerable souls to h.e.l.l. They are doing the same at the present day to the miserable survivors, although they are innocent.

36.36. And to prove the axiom I laid down in the beginning, namely that the tyranny, violence, and injustice of the Spaniards towards these gentle lambs, accompanied by cruelty, inhumanity, and wickedness, most worthy of all fire and torture, which continue in the said provinces, go on increasing, I cite the following.

37.37. After the ma.s.sacres and slaughter of the war, the people are condemned, as was said, to the horrible slavery described above. To one of the devils, two hundred Indians were given, to another, three. The devil commandant ordered a hundred Indians to be called before him and when they promptly came like so many lambs, he had the heads of thirty or forty cut off; and said to the others: "I will do the same to you, if you do not serve me well, and if you leave without my permission."

38.38. Now in G.o.d's name consider, you, who read this, what sort of deeds are these, and whether they do not surpa.s.s every imaginable cruelty and injustice, and whether it squares well with such Christians as these to call them devils; and whether it could be worse to give the Indians into the charge of the devils of h.e.l.l than to the Christians of the Indies.

39.39. I will also tell of another such operation; I do not know which is the more cruel, the more infernal, and nearer the ferocity of wild beasts, this one or that one just told.

40.40. It has already been said, that the Spaniards of the Indies have tamed and trained the strongest and most ferocious dogs to kill and tear the Indians to pieces.

41.41. Listen and see, all you who are true Christians and also you who are not, whether such deeds have ever been heard of in the world; to feed the said dogs they take many Indians in chains with them on their journeys, as though they were herds of swine; and they kill them, making public butchery of human flesh; and one says to the other; "lend me a quarter of one of these villeins to give to my dogs to eat, until I kill." It is as though they were lending a quarter of pork or of mutton.

42.42. There are others, who go hunting with their dogs in the morning and when one is asked on his return for dinner how it has fared with him, he replies; "it has fared well with me, because I have left perhaps fifteen or twenty villeins killed by my dogs."

43.43. All these and other diabolical things are being proved now in law-suits started by some tyrants against others. What can be filthier, fiercer, and more inhuman?

44.44. I will finish with this, till news comes of other deeds of more eminent wickedness, if any such there can be: or until, on our return there, we again behold them, as we continually have with our own eyes since forty-two years.

45.45. I protest before G.o.d on my conscience that, as I believe and hold certain, such are the perdition, harm, destruction, depopulation, slaughter, deaths, and great and horrible cruelties, and most foul ways of violence, injustice, robbery, and ma.s.sacre, done among those people and in all those countries of the Indies, that with all I have described, and those upon which I have enlarged, I have not told nor enlarged upon, in quality and quant.i.ty, a ten thousandth part of what has been done and is being done to-day.

46.46. And that all Christians may have greater compa.s.sion on those innocent nations, and that they may more sincerely lament their loss and doom, and blame and abominate the detestible avarice, ambition, and cruelty of the Spaniards, let them all hold this truth for certain, in addition to what I have affirmed above; namely, that from the time the Indies were discovered down to the present, nowhere did the Indians harm any Christians, before they had sustained harm, robbery, and treachery from them. Nay, they always esteemed them immortal, and come from Heaven; and as such they received them, until their deeds manifested their character and intentions.

47.47. It is well to add something else, that from the beginning till the present day the Spaniards have given no more thought to providing for the preaching of the faith of Jesus Christ to these people than if they were dogs or other animals: nay, they have persistently afflicted and persecuted the monks, to prevent them from preaching, because it seemed to them an impediment to the acquisition of the gold and wealth they promised themselves in their greedy desires.

48.48. And to-day there is not in all the Indies more knowledge of G.o.d among these people, as to whether He is of wood, or in heaven or on earth, than there was a hundred years ago, except in new Spain, where monks have gone and which is but a very little corner of the Indies. And so all have perished and are peris.h.i.+ng, without faith and without Sacraments.

1. I was induced to write this work I, Fray Bartolomeus de las Casas, or Casaus, friar of St. Dominic, who by G.o.d's mercy do go about this Court of Spain, trying to drive the h.e.l.l out of the Indies, and to bring about that all those numberless mult.i.tudes of souls, redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ, shall not hopelessly perish forever; moved also by the compa.s.sion I feel for my fatherland, Castile, that G.o.d may not destroy it for such great sins, committed against His faith and honour and against fellow creatures. A few persons of quality who reside at this Court and are jealous of G.o.d's honour and compa.s.sionate towards the afflictions and calamities of others, urged me to this work although it was my own intention which my continual occupations had never allowed me to put into effect.

2.2. I brought it to a close at Valencia the 8th of December 1542, when all the violence was more terrible, and the oppression, tyranny, ma.s.sacres, robberies, destructions, slaughter, depopulation, anguish, and calamity aforesaid, are actually at their height in all the regions where the Christians of the Indies are; although in some places they are fiercer, and more abominable than in others.

3.3. Mexico and its neighbourhood are a little less badly off; there, at least, such things dare not be done publicly, because there is somewhat more justice than elsewhere, although very little, for they still kill the people with infernal burdens.

4.4. I have great hope, for the Emperor and King of Spain our Lord Don Carlos, Fifth of this name is getting to understand the wickedness and treachery that, contrary to the will of G.o.d, and of himself, is and has been done to those people and in those countries; heretofore the truth has been studiously hidden from him, that it is his duty to extirpate so many evils and bring succour to that new world, given him by G.o.d, as to one who is a lover and observer of justice, whose glorious, and happy life and Imperial state may G.o.d Almighty long prosper, to the relief of all his universal Church, and for the final salvation of his own Royal soul. Amen.

1. Since the above was written, some laws and edicts have been published by His Majesty, who was then in the town of Barcelona, in the month of November 1542 and in the town of Madrid the following year; these contain such provisions as now seem suitable to bring about the cessation of the great wickedness and sin committed against G.o.d and our fellow creatures, to the total ruin and destruction of that world.

2.2. After many conferences and debates amongst conscientious and learned authorities, who were a.s.sembled in the town of Valladolid, His Majesty made the said laws; acting finally on the decision and opinion of the greater part of all those who gave their votes in writing, and who drew nearer to the law of Jesus Christ, as true Christians. They were likewise free from the corruption and foulness of the treasures stolen from the Indies that soiled the hands, and still more the souls of many in authority who, in their blindness, had committed unscrupulous destruction.

3.3. When these laws were published, the agents of the tyrants, then at Court, made many copies of them; they displeased all these men who considered that they shut the doors to their partic.i.p.ation in what was robbed and taken by tyranny: and they sent the copies to divers parts of the Indies.

4.4. None of those who there had charge of robbing the Indians, and of finis.h.i.+ng their destruction by their tyranny, had ever observed any order, but such disorder as might have been made by Lucifer; when they saw the copies, before the arrival of the new judges who were to execute them, it is said and believed that they had been warned of what was coming by those in Spain, who have till now encouraged their sins and violence. They were so agitated, that when the good judges who were to carry out the laws arrived, they resolved to set aside shame and obedience to the King, just as they had already lost all love and fear of G.o.d.

5.5. They thus determined to let themselves be called traitors, for they are cruel and unbridled tyrants, particularly in the kingdoms of Peru, where at present, in this year of 1546, such horrible, frightful, and execrable deeds are committed, as have never been done, either in the Indies or in the world; not only do such things happen among the Indians whom they have already all or nearly all killed, but among themselves. In the absence of the King's justice to punish them, G.o.d's justice has come from heaven to bring dissension amongst them and to make one to be the executioner of the other.

6.6. s.h.i.+elded by the rebellion of these tyrants, those in all the other regions, would not obey the laws and, under pretext of appealing against them, have also revolted; they resent having to abdicate the dignities and power they have usurped, and to losing the Indians whom they hold in perpetual slavery.

7.7. Where they have ceased to kill quickly by the sword, they kill slowly by personal servitude and other unjust and intolerable vexations. And till now the King has not succeeded in preventing them because all, small and great, go there to pilfer, some more, some less, some publicly and openly, others secretly and under disguise; and with the pretext that they are serving the king, they dishonour G.o.d, and rob and destroy the King.

The present work was printed in the most n.o.ble, and faithful town of Seville, at the house of Sebastian Truxillo book-printer. To our Lady of Grace.

The Year M.D.LII

What follows is part of a letter and report, written by one of those very men who went to these regions, recounting the deeds the captain did, and allowed to be done, in the countries he visited. When the said letter and report was given with other things to be bound, the bookseller either forgot or lost one or more pages containing frightful things, that had all been given me by one of those who did them, all of which I had in my possession; what follows is therefore without beginning or end. But as this piece that is left, is full of notorious things, it seemed well to me not to leave it unprinted: because I believe it will not excite less compa.s.sion and horror in Your Highness, than some of the irregularities already related, as well also as the desire to correct them.

LETTER

1. He allowed the Indians to be chained and put in prisons, and so it was done. And the said captain took three or four in chains for himself; by so doing and by robbing the Indians of their supplies instead of providing for necessary sowing and populating, the natives of the country were reduced to such want, that great numbers of them were found in the streets starved to death.

2.2. He killed about ten thousand souls by making the Indians carry the Spaniards' baggage to and from the beach, because all who reached the coast died of the heat.

3.3. After this he followed the same trail and road as Juan de Ampudia, sending the Indians he had brought from Quito, a day in front, to discover the Indian towns and to sack them so that he and his people might avail themselves of them on their arrival. Those Indians belonged to him and his companions, one of whom had two hundred, another three hundred, according to the number each brought with him, and they carried whatever their masters robbed. And in this they treated children and women most cruelly.

4.4. He followed the same course in Quito, burning all the country and the stores of maize belonging to the lords; he consented to the killing of great numbers of sheep, all of which form the princ.i.p.al provision and maintenance of the natives and of the Spaniards; for the latter use two or three hundred just to eat the brains and fat alone, and waste the meat.

5.5. His friendly Indians who went with him, killed great numbers of sheep, just to eat the hearts, not eating anything else. And so two men in a province called Purua killed twenty-five sheep and pack-sheep, just to eat the brains and fat, although among the Spaniards they cost twenty and twenty-five pesos each.

6.6. By such excessive disorder, they killed more than a hundred thousand head of animals, which reduced the country to very great want, while the natives died of starvation in great numbers. Although there was more maize in Quito than can be told, this bad order of things brought such penury on the people that a measure of maize came to cost ten pesos, and a sheep the same.

7.7. When the said captain returned from the coast, he determined to leave Quito, to go in search of Captain Juan de Ampudia. He took more than two hundred foot and hors.e.m.e.n, among whom he led many inhabitants of the country of Quito. The said captain permitted the colonists who accompanied him to draw the lords from their departments and as many Indians as they liked, and this they did.

8.8. Alonso Sanchez Nuyta took a lord and more than a hundred Indians with their wives; Pedro Cobo and his cousin, more than a hundred and fifty with their wives and many of the children, who otherwise all died of starvation. And so likewise Moran, an inhabitant of Popayan, had more than two hundred persons; and all the other inhabitants and soldiers also took as many as each could.

9.9. And the said soldiers asked him if he would give them licence to put the Indians they brought with them, in prison; and he said yes, until they died, and when these were dead, also others; for if the Indians were va.s.sals of His Majesty, they were also of the Spaniards, and they died in war.

10.10. In this way the said captain left Quito and went to a town called Otabalo, which he owned at that time by virtue of the distribution, and he demanded five hundred men for the war from its lord, who gave them to him with some Indian chiefs. He distributed some of these people among the soldiers and the rest he took with himself, some with packs, and others in chains, and some, who served him and brought him food, were free; the soldiers also took them, bound in this way with chains and cords.

11.11. When they left the province of Quito they took away more than six thousand Indians, men and women of whom not twenty men returned to their country: because they all died of the great and excessive labours imposed on them, in countries far from their native land.

12.12. It happened at this time, that one Alonso Sanchez was sent by the said captain in command of certain people in a province; on the way, he met a number of women and boys loaded with provisions who, instead of fleeing, waited for him, to give them to him; and he had them all put to the sword.

13.13. And a miracle happened when a soldier was stabbing an Indian woman; at the first blow the sword broke in half, and at the second only the handle was left, without his being able to wound her. Another soldier with a double bladed dagger wanted to stab another Indian woman, but at the first blow four fingers' length of the point broke off, and at the second nothing remained but the handle alone.

14.14. When the said captain left Quito, leading away such a quant.i.ty of natives, separating them from their wives, giving some of the young girls to those Indians he took with him, and others to those who were left behind on account of their old age, a woman came behind him, with a little child in her arms, weeping and begging him not to take her husband away from her, because she had three little children whom she would not be able to bring up, and who would die of starvation; and seeing that he answered her roughly the first time, she came back a second with louder cries saying, that her children would die of starvation: and when she saw, that he commanded she should be driven away and that he would not release her husband, she threw the child on some stones and killed it.

15.15. When the said captain arrived in the province of Lili at a town called Palo near the great river, he found there the Captain Juan de Ampudia, who had gone in advance to explore and pacify the country; the said Ampudia had founded a town called Ampudia, in the name of His Majesty and of the Marquis Francisco Pizarro, and had appointed Pedro Solano de Quinones and eight rulers as ordinary judges; and the greater part of the country was at peace, and divided. As soon as he knew that the said captain was at the river, he went to see him accompanied by many of the inhabitants and peaceful Indians, loaded with provisions and fruit; and from thenceforward all the Indians in the neighbourhood went to visit the said captain, and to bring him food.

16.16. These were the Indians from Namudi, Palo, Soliman, and Bolo; but because they did not bring as much maize as he wanted, he ordered many Spaniards to go with their Indians, men and women to get maize, wherever they found it. So they went to Bolo and to Palo, where they found the Indians, tranquil in their houses; and the said Spaniards and those who went with them, stole and carried off the maize, gold, stuffs, and all the Indians possessed, and they bound many of them.

17.17. When the Indians saw that they were treated so badly, they went to complain to the said captain of what had been done, and to request that the Spaniards should restore all they had taken from them. He would not have anything restored, but told them that his men would not go there a second time.

18.18. Within three or four days the Spaniards returned for maize, and to rob the Indians of the town. The Indians having seen that the said captain kept and observed his word so little, all the country revolted, which did much harm and disservice to G.o.d Our Lord, and to His Majesty.

19.19. So the whole country is left deserted, because the people have been destroyed by their enemies the Olomas and Manipos: these are a warlike people from the mountains, who descended every day to the plains to capture and despoil them, seeing that their towns and native country were left abandoned; and the most powerful among them ate the weaker, because they were all dying of starvation.

20.20. Having done this, the said captain returned to the said country of Ampudia, where he was received as General and seven days later he again left to go to the places called Lili and Peti, accompanied by more than two hundred men on foot and on horse.

21.21. Afterwards the said commander sent his captain in all directions, making cruel war on the natives; and so they killed great numbers of Indians, men and women, and burnt their houses and stole their goods: this lasted many days.

22.22. The lords of the country seeing that they were killing and destroying them, sent some peaceable Indians, with provisions. And the said captain having left for a settlement called Yce, he at once sent some Spaniards to rob, capture, and kill as many Indians as they could, commanding that many houses should be burnt; and so they burnt more than a hundred.

23.23. From there he went to another town, called Tolilicuy, (105) where the lord at once came forth peaceably with many Indians: and the said captain demanded gold of him and of his Indians. The lord said he had but little, but that he would give him what he had. They all immediately began to bring him what they could.

24.24. The said captain gave each of the Indians a ticket bearing the name of the said Indian who had given him gold, threatening that any Indian who did not pay and was without this ticket, should be thrown to the dogs. Terrified by this, all the Indians who had gold, gave him all that they could; and those who had none fled to the mountain and to other towns, for fear of being killed; for which reason a great number of natives perished.

25.25. The said captain forthwith ordered the lords to send two Indians to another town, called Dagua, to order the inhabitants to come peaceably to him, and bring him a quant.i.ty of gold.

26.26. On arriving at another town, he sent a number of Spaniards, and Indians from Tolilicuy to capture many Indians, and so the following day they brought back more than a hundred persons with them. He took all those capable of carrying loads, for himself and the soldiers, and put them in chains so that they all died; and the said captain gave the infants to the said lords of Tolilicuy to be eaten. And to-day in the house of the said Lord Tolilicuy there are the skins of the infants full of ashes.

27.27. Without saying anything, he departed from there for the provinces of Calili, where he joined Captain Juan de Ampudia, who had been sent by him to explore the country by another route; both the one and the other did much slaughter and much injury to the native people wherever they went.

28.28. The said Juan de Ampudia arrived at a place, the lord of which was called Bitacon; he had prepared some pits for his defence, into which two horses belonging to Antonio Redondo and Marcus Marquez fell; the latter died but the other not. In consequence of this the said Ampudia ordered as many as possible of the Indians, men and women, to be captured; more than a hundred persons were captured whom they threw into those pits alive where they killed them, and they burnt more than a hundred houses in that town.

29.29. Thus they joined one another at a large town and, without calling the Indians pacifically, nor sending interpreters to summon them, they made cruel war on them, and persecuted them, and killed great numbers of them. And as soon as they joined one another as has been said, the aforenamed Ampudia told the captain what he had done at Bitacon, and how he had thrown so many people into the pits; and the said captain replied that he had done very well; and that he himself had done the same at Riobamba, which is in the province of Quito, where he threw more than two hundred persons into the pits; both stayed here, making war throughout the country.

30.30. After this he entered the province of Biru or Anzerma, making cruel war of fire and blood, from this province to the salt ponds. From there he sent Francisco Garcia Tobar forward, making cruel war on the natives as is told above; and the Indians went to him two by two, making signs that they sought peace in the name of all the country, and asking what the Spaniards wished; for if they wanted gold or women or provisions, they should be given them, and begging that they should not be killed in this way: and this the Spaniards themselves have confessed to be true.

31.31. And the said Francisco Garcia told them to go away, that they were drunk, and that he did not understand them, after which he returned to where the said captain was and they set out to march through all the province, making most cruel war on the natives, plundering and killing them; and more than two thousand souls were carried off from there between him and his soldiers, all of whom died in chains.

32.32. Before they left the inhabited country, they killed more than five hundred persons. Thus he returned to the province of Calili; and if on the way some Indian, man or woman, became so tired that he could not walk, they stabbed him; if he was in chains they cut off his head, so as not to undo them and so that the others seeing this, should not feign being ill.

33.33. In this way they all died, and on this journey all the people he had brought from Quito, Pasto, Quilla, Cagua, Paria, Popayan, Lili, Cali, and Anzerma, perished in very great numbers. On his return march, as soon as he entered the large town, they killed all they could. And they captured three hundred persons in that day.

34.34. From the province of Lili, he sent the said captain, Juan de Ampudia, with many people to the place and dwellings of Lili, in order to capture all the Indians, men and women, that he could, for carrying the packs; because all the numerous people he had brought from Anzerma, had already died. And the said Juan de Ampudia brought more than a thousand persons, many of whom he killed.

35.35. The said captain took all the people he needed, giving the rest to the soldiers, who at once put them in chains, where they all died: after depriving the said country of the Spaniards, and of the natives in such great numbers, as is seen by the few that are left, he set out for Popayan.

36.36. On the way he left behind a live Spaniard, whose name was Martin de Aguirre, because he could not walk as much as the healthy ones. On his arrival at Popayan he dwelt in that town, and began to destroy, and rob the Indians of the surrounding country, with the same disorder as he had done in the others.

37.37. He made a royal stamp here and melted all the gold he had gathered, and that Juan de Ampudia had gathered before he came; and without any accounting or explanation, and without giving any part to any soldier, he took it all for himself, except that he gave what he chose to some whose horses were dead. This done, and after taking the fifths of His Majesty he said he was going to Cuzco to report to his Governor; so he set out for Quito, taking a great number of Indians, men, and women, all of whom died on the journey and in that place. And further the said captain returned to destroy the royal stamp he had made.

38.38. It is well at this point to relate a word that this man said of himself, showing that he very well knew the evil and cruelty that he did. He spoke thus: "In fifty years, those that pa.s.s by here and hear of these things, will say: 'It was here that the tyrant so and so marched.' "

39.39. These in-comings and out-goings of this captain in those kingdoms, and this way of visiting those people living safely in their country, and these operations practised by him against them, Your Highness should know and be convinced, have always been done by the Spaniards everywhere in the same way, from the discovery of the Indies till the present day.